“And now,” said Lady Fielding kindly, “tell me about your work.”
“I like it,” said Robin. “I like the boys with a few exceptions whom I think anyone would dislike anywhere. I like the Birketts and I am very fond of the Carters. And we are gradually getting rid of our female teachers, thank God. Two of the old masters have come back, discharged from the army, but perfectly fit for work, and if this peace ever gets going we may have a few more back that are physically fit. I can do tennis, but I can’t do football.”
Lady Fielding then asked in a very friendly way about his own future. During the year that Anne had spent at Hall’s End, the Fielding’s house in Hallbury, with the old governess Miss Bunting, Robin and Anne had become great friends. The Fieldings liked and respected Robin’s old father, who had taken a grandfatherly fancy to Anne and given her a ring that had belonged to Robin’s mother. They had also come to like Robin very much and had a high opinion of his courage in facing his physical disability and making a success of his little pre-preparatory school. Then Miss Bunting had died and Robin had gone as temporary classics master to Southbridge. Anne’s health was greatly improved, they had shut Hall’s End and removed to the Close. But they had managed to see a good deal of Robin off and on and he had come to look upon Number Seventeen as a kind of second home and Anne as a kind of friendly confidante who was always ready to listen and sometimes came out with an unexpected piece of helpful commonsense. Lady Fielding, always busier than she meant to be, was glad for Anne to have a friend in Robin, for owing to her delicate health, she had only had a few terms at the Barchester High School and had not found anyone there whom she specially liked.
Whether it ever occured to Lady Fielding or to her husband that they might be encouraging an attachment between Robin and Anne, we cannot say. Probably not. Anne had remained young in many ways for her age owing to her sheltered life and they had come to look upon Robin as a son, or perhaps a cousin of the house. And in any case Anne and Robin had always remained upon very friendly unemotional terms, felt very safe and comfortable in each other’s society; and were not in the least unhappy or anxious if they did not meet for several weeks at a time.
“My future,” said Robin, “appears to be settling itself without my interference. Philip Winter, who used to be Senior Classics Master is not coming back. He is going to start a prep. school at Beliers with his wife, chiefly for boys from naval families.”
“Let me see,” said Lady Fielding who liked to get things clear. “His wife’s brother will come in for the Priory, won’t he?”
Robin said yes, when Sir Harry Waring died, and he understood that he would never be able to afford to live at the Priory and would be delighted to let his sister and her husband take it over.
“And Birkett told me not long ago,” said Robin continuing his story, “that as far as he was concerned, I was going to get Winter’s job. He said he wouldn’t have any trouble with the Governors. And that being so, I shall have quite a decent screw and might get a house later on. So what with my salary and my own bit of money from my mother and what my respected father will leave me some day, and of course watering the boarders’ milk and selling their joints to the rag-and-bone man, I shall become a rather well-off crusty bachelor and a well-known Southbridge bore.”
“You will have to get married,” said Lady Fielding, “won’t you? I believe Birkett prefers married housemasters.”
“I have considered that too,” said Robin gravely, “but I am not quite sure whether one ought to have a house to take a wife to, or provide oneself with a wife in order to get a house. But I shall work that all out in time.”
“Well let me know if I can help,” said Lady Fielding kindly, and they drifted off into speculations upon the horrors of peace and the prospects of a General Election.
“Robin,” said Lady Fielding under the cover of general conversation, “I can’t say anything about it, but we might be taking Anne to London in the autumn.”
“Oh,” said Robin. Then he looked at Lady Fielding, looked quickly at Sir Robert and then questioningly at Lady Fielding. “Yes,” said Lady Fielding. “But don’t tell Anne. And we may not go.”
By this time dinner was nearly over and the company had remained very comfortably paired off. The Colonial Bishop to whom every fresh love (in an honourable and clerical way) was the best, had gone on falling in love with Sylvia and told her many uninteresting facts about his sub-equatorial diocese. Sylvia listened kindly and if she felt that it was hard lines to be between two old men (by which she meant Sir Robert and Bishop Joram), she did not envy Anne. From time to time she thought a little wistfully of the W.A.A.F., for now that her days in it were about to be numbered, all the companionship and fun, even the hard work, the loneliness on some stations, the bitter winters in huts, the odiousness of the Philpott woman, all began to assume a nostalgic rose-colour.
Lady Fielding took her ladies upstairs to the still sun-lit drawing-room where they were shortly joined by the men. Anne asked the Colonial Bishop to tell her how Robin’s Aunt Sally was getting on and extracted from him a highly unsympathetic account of the only occasion on which he had dined at the Palace.
“I know, my dear Miss Fielding,” he said, which made Anne wonder for a moment whom he was addressing, “that it is not easy to get wine or spirits or even beer now, but cold water at dinner and glasses of hot water at half past nine seem to me totally incompatible with the episcopal dignity. The lowest Mpuma—the name of the hereditary slave caste in Mnangaland—would not let a stranger, far less a member of the Church of England, enter his hut without offering to chew some Mgapo for him.”
Anne asked what Mgapo was.
The Bishop said it was a kind of preparation of Mkopo, the native millet, fermented with the juice of the Mbola palm in a pit previously filled with the entrails of the Mqaka, a small antelope, and subsequently chewed for three days and nights by the wives of the chief, or as a great courtesy by the chief himself.
Anne said she didn’t think the Bishop would have time to do so much chewing and she thought the Bishop’s wife had false teeth.
The Colonial Bishop said this was merely a comparison, and that frankly he could think of no comparison between the inhabitants of the Palace and Mnangaland that would not be heavily in favour of his ebony flock. Then Anne told him about the children’s dance at the Palace when the Bishop’s chaplain had played the piano, which was a very bad piano, because the Bishop’s wife had been too stingy to hire a pianist and a decent piano, and could only play one waltz and one polka, and the refreshments were a piece of cake and a glass of tepid lemonade made with lemonade powder for each child, and they laughed a good deal. But all the time Anne, without being in the least envious of Sylvia, was thinking how nice it would be if David would come and sit by her. She was pleased that he should like Sylvia, and thought that Sylvia looked very beautiful, and knew that she could never be beautiful like Sylvia; and she told herself that she had had David all dinner time and must not be greedy. But her thoughts and sometimes her eyes wandered to where David, sitting by the window with his Winged Victory, was talking in what was evidently a very amusing way; and then ashamed of her selfishness she tried to look as interested as possible by what the Colonial Bishop was saying and hardly heard it at all.
As for David, he was already rather bored. Mrs. Brandon was charming, but not one of his own sort. Lady Fielding he liked, but she was occupied with Robin Dale. Anne with her upward glance was a tantalising object and he desired her further acquaintance, but the Colonial Bishop was well in possession. So he had seized the golden Sylvia, who really looked more splendid than ever in the setting sun which touched her hair to a deeper gold and enhanced her rose-petal complexion; not to speak of a figure which sunset could neither mend nor mar. And she was of good stock too; better than Anne. The Hallidays had been at Hatch End for longer than the Leslies had been at Rushwater: longer possibly than the Pomfrets had been at the Towers. The Fieldings were delightful people, but
they were Barchester as far as one knew anything about their families: not county. There must be a good background to produce them and to produce that outstanding and amazingly attractive child. He had thought of her just a little too much for his own comfort. Now he was deliberately laying siege to Sylvia as a distraction and he was behaving badly and he knew it. He fell into a reverie as the sun sank behind the cedars in the Deanery garden.
Sylvia, with such perfect health and equable temperament that she thought very little about her own looks, faintly envying Anne for being slight and having dark cloudy hair, was not at all embarrassed by the silence, for she rarely had much to say for herself. Accustomed for some years to live among women, having her leaves in a world mostly without young men, she had become rather independent of the other sex, till David, with his open admiration and easy flattery, had come to Holdings to stay with the Grahams. He had looked at her and admired her and Sylvia’s heart had also begun to beat faster. She would have liked to say clever things to impress him, but sure instinct told her he had seen too many women to be impressed and that her only chance was to remain, if possible, exactly as she was. And the most difficult thing in the world, as we all know, is to be oneself without being conscious of it, once the self-consciousness has been raised. To break a silence that was beginning to make her uneasy she asked David what he was thinking about.
“Getting married,” said David, truthfully but not very considerately.
“Oh, are you engaged then?” said Sylvia, taking her fences one by one.
“Lord, no,” said David. “Only sometimes one wonders, that’s all.”
“What kind of a wife do you want?” said Sylvia.
“Any wife I have will have to be as funny as hell all the time,” said David, speaking to his own thoughts, not to Miss Sylvia Halliday.
Sylvia was silenced. Never she knew, could she be as funny as hell. In fact, she doubted, being a very unconceited girl, whether she could be funny at all, except for laughing with George or with Anne, about silly things, or having silly giggles in the W.A.A.F. about nothing at all. In fact she wondered what women who were as funny as hell were really like and began to think if she had ever met one. Lady Fielding certainly wasn’t; Mrs. Brandon wasn’t; Anne wasn’t. Nor was her mother, nor Lady Graham, nor any of the people she knew. The only person she could think of who at all filled the bill was that odious Philpott woman, who to do her justice was always at the top of her form, horrid though she was. If that was the kind of woman David Leslie liked. . . . She left the sentence unfinished in her mind.
As so often happens, all the conversations in the room came to an end about the same time, and there were exclamations about not keeping cars waiting and the lateness of the hour, though the Double Summer Time had not long set. Mrs. Brandon was the first to leave. Then Robin said he must be getting back to Southbridge and bade affectionate good-byes to his host and hostess.
“Will you and Anne come to Southbridge for the School Sports, Lady Fielding,” he said. “The beggarly ushers are allowed to have tea-parties in their rooms. I’ll let you know the date as soon as it is fixed. And Sir Robert too of course, if he is free.”
Lady Fielding said they would love to come, and hoped the date would be a free one, a hint which Robin understood. Then he said good-bye to Anne and was going away when David said he was coming too. So he waited while David said good-bye with a grace that Robin knew he could never attain and somehow did not wish to attain, and the two young men went down together.
“I say, Dale,” said David, “do come out to Holdings sometime. Agnes would love it and I’ll mostly be there and my mamma will adore it. Those dull boys of my brother John’s come sometimes to Holdings and sometimes to Rushwater. Come with them. How good-looking that Halliday girl is.”
Robin cordially agreed.
“And Anne too,” said David. “I’d like to see Anne in London. She’d do it well. Sylvia couldn’t; she must stay in the country. Well, good luck.”
He folded his long legs into his car and went away. Robin got more slowly into the returned master’s car and also went away, with a little gnawing thought about Anne being in London if her father got into Parliament, and David being in London and meeting her at parties to which Robin Dale would never be invited.
After considerably outstaying his welcome, the Colonial Bishop went back to his lodgings.
“Well, good-night Sylvia dear,” said Lady Fielding firmly. “You were a great help to the party. Sleep very well. Anne darling, come and say good-night to me in my room before you go to bed.”
So when Anne had talked about the party with Sylvia, she padded across in her dressing-gown and slippers to her mother’s room.
Lady Fielding was sitting on a sofa and Sir Robert was talking to her through the open dressing-room door.
“Come in darling,” said her mother. “There is a kind of secret daddy and I want to tell you.”
Anne’s eyes became larger and darker than ever.
“The fact is, Anne,” said Sir Robert coming in in his shirt sleeves, “that the Conservative Association has put me up as their official candidate.”
“Will you be in Parliament then?” said Anne awestruck.
Sir Robert said that depended on the electors.
“And your friend Heather’s father is standing for Labour, I think,” said Sir Robert, “but it isn’t officially announced yet.”
“I think,” said Anne, “that Miss Bunting would have been very glad, Daddy.”
“Oh, you do, do you,” said Sir Robert, amused. “And why do you think so?”
“Well,” said Anne, twisting the sash of her dressing-gown in and out of her fingers, “she would have liked you to help Mr. Churchill.”
At this simple creed Anne’s parents nearly laughed: but did not quite laugh, because it seemed to them that Anne, speaking for Miss Bunting, might be right.
“That’s all, darling,” said Lady Fielding. “And a secret just for the present.”
Anne kissed her parents good-night very affectionately and went back to her room. Now at last she was really grown-up. She had often thought she was grown-up before, and every time she reached that point, something even grown-upper had happened. Now nothing more grown-up could ever happen to her in her life and she went to sleep prepared to keep the secret even from Robin. As for David he was forgotten in this strange exciting moment in a way that would have caused him considerable if temporary pique if he had known it.
CHAPTER 6
THE whole of England now settled down to grumble, and indeed had everything to grumble about and would have felt very peculiar if they hadn’t. May melted into June. Sir Robert’s election committee got busy. Mr. Adams’s election committee got very much busier, but were a good deal hampered by the irregular attitude of their candidate who refused to go on the lines laid down for him and carried on a kind of guerrilla campaign of his own. Sir Robert and Mr. Adams continued to meet at the County Club and took a good deal of pleasure in each other’s society, thus scandalising all their partisans.
“It’s funny you and me getting so friendly,” said Mr. Adams to Sir Robert at lunch one day, “and then having to knock one another about like Punch and Judy as you might say. Still, it’s a fair go and a ding-dong go and no malice borne. And if I wake up one morning and find I’m Sam Adams, M.P., I’ll be the first to laugh.”
“I expect it does feel a bit queer,” said Sir Robert thoughtfully. “How is Heather doing?”
“She’s doing fine,” said Mr. Adams. “She took to Cambridge like a duck to water and there isn’t an ology she doesn’t know. She wanted to come here and help her old Dad with the election, but the lady that’s head of the college said she did ought to go to a reading party. ‘Well, Miss Hipcock,’ I said—that’s her name, Miss Hipcock, though it’s not a name I’d choose myself—‘well,’ I said, ‘I don’t know that my Heth needs much reading, seeing as I can get her all the books she wants by telling my sekertary to phone up the booksellers
, but if that’s your idea, I daresay there’s something in it.’ Well, the long and the short of it seems to be that they want my Heth to do some extra studying and Sam Adams was never one to spoil a ship for a ha’porth of tar, nor a good machine for a ha’porth of oil neither,” said Mr. Adams reflectively, “so she won’t be here for the election. And I must say I’m just as glad to see her out of it. There’s going to be some nasty feeling and I wouldn’t like my girlie mixed up in it. Nor yours neither.”
“I feel much as you do,” said Sir Robert. “I don’t think the city will be very pleasant in the next few weeks, and I hope Anne is going to stay with friends in the country for part of the time.”
“I liked your girl that summer at Hallbury,” said Mr. Adams. “My Heth liked her too. But they aren’t going to see much of each other in the future and that’s a fack.”
Sir Robert looked questioningly at Mr. Adams.
“Men are one thing, women are another,” said Mr. Adams.
Sir Robert agreed.
“You and me can meet at the Club, or on the platform, or any other place and speak our minds and no harm done,” said Mr. Adams, “But your Anne and my Heth won’t be meeting much. They’re different. My Heth has the brains and I’ve got the money to back them, and my Heth is going to go far. But your Anne doesn’t need the brains nor the money; and she doesn’t need to go far, because she’s where she ought to be.”
What Mr. Adams had been saying was so true that Sir Robert remained silent.
“Well, that’s all,” said Mr. Adams. “Sam Adams was always one to speak his mind. And I may say,” he added thoughtfully, “that he will likely speak his mind more than his election committee like. If the Labour bosses think they can boss Sam Adams, that’s where they trip up on the mat. Well, best of luck, Fielding.”
Peace Breaks Out Page 17
